


And after everything I still recognize your face

by anonymousAlchemist



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, HAVE SOME LUCRETIA AND THE GANG BACKSTORY, YALL THE NEW EP HAS ME DISTRAUGHT, she makes bad decisions but she loves her friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 08:18:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10433439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymousAlchemist/pseuds/anonymousAlchemist
Summary: Lucretia is not a hero.Alternate title: in which Lucretia makes bad decisions and loves her friends and tries her best.Alternate alternate title: torrential backstory featuring ep. 59 spoilers cause yall. someone had to write this.





	

**Author's Note:**

> griffin mcelroy killed me dead. spoilers for newest ep enclosed. read at own risk.

  **ONE**

Lucretia is the last recruit for the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration’s Red Robes. They only ever call them the Red Robes, with the capital R's. The recruits have no names and wear red robes with hoods that hide their faces in public. They are leaving on their first mission in a month and a half. 

Red Robes are hand-picked.Red Robes are the only people allowed to go off-realm.Red Robes come from different realms and have adventures and save worlds and seek out new peoples and technologies. The Red Robes are publicized, if you’re in the right circles — scientists, explorers, heroes. It’s supposed to be the opportunity of a lifetime.

Lucretia has wanted to be a Red Robe since she heard about them from her dissertation advisor. She never expected to be invited to join. But she gets a missive a week before the ship leaves on its first mission, that her application has been accepted.

The Red Robes are heroes, and Lucretia is going to be one of them. 

Lucretia is the last person to board the ship. She brings a duffel bag filled with all the earthly possessions she wants to un-earth, and she leaves a letter she left for her dissertation advisor in his mailbox. She has no living family to leave behind. Lucretia steps confidently through the doors to hide her nerves.

“I’m Lucretia. I’m the newest recruit?” she says, a hint of a question in her voice. She’s twenty-five and finished her doctorate in Extraplanar Studies and Astrophysics two months ago. She looks down, and Captain Davenport beams up at her.

“It’s great to meet you, Lucretia,” Captain Davenport says, as she leans down to shake his hand. “Come on, I’ll take you to meet the others.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

He smiles at her. “Just call me Davenport, Lucretia. We’re all in the same ship here — literally! — there’s no need for formality.”

Davenport leads her through a maze of hallways to a large common area. Noise emanates, a comfortable chatter. They're on schedule to leave tonight. Davenport clears his throat, and her new teammates look at her expectantly. Two humans, two elves, and a dwarf. The pretty elf lounged across another, nearly identical pretty elf, grins. The elf disentangles herself from her doppelgänger and walks over.

“Fuck yeah! Another girl! Score!” the elf says, enveloping Lucretia in an enthusiastic hug. “I’m Lup. That’s Taako, Merle, Magnus, and Barry. You must be Lucretia?”

“Yes,” Lucretia says, startled but pleased. “That’s me.”

 

**TWO**

 Taako and Lup are both scientists. They’re eccentric — and brilliant, with strange gaps in their education that they don’t talk about. Lucretia spends a lot of time with them in the lab on the ship. They’re supposed to be doing research — Taako and Lup playing with the material properties of things they find, Lucretia crossreferencing similarities between realms and recording everything for posterity.  

But mostly, they just toss half-baked theories about different realms around. 

“I know I shouldn't be saying this because this is where Merle is from, but this realm is weird as fuck,” Lup says. “They call their science ‘magic.’”

Taako shrugs and tosses a macaron at his sister. “Or maybe we just call their magic, ‘science.’ You ever think about that, cha’lup?”

Lup scowls at him, and flicks crumbs back using her wand. “Stop calling me that, Taako.” She takes a bite of the macaron. “Oh! This is better than your last batch.”

“Thanks,” he says, and glances over at Lucretia. “You want one, ‘Cretia? Catch!”

He pitches a cookie at her, and she catches it neatly. “Thanks.”

The macaron delicately crunches between her teeth. He got the texture just right. 

 

**THREE**

It takes four years for Magnus to mention his wife. He brings it up in passing at dinner, and everyone crowds around, exclaiming, “So, tell us about her,” and “What’s her na-ame?”

And he says, “Her name was Julia, and she was beautiful, and she died when I was at a carpentry contest.” All of you go quiet.

The story comes spilling out, and three-fourths of you cry. Magnus tries to stop the tears. “No, no, no, It’s okay, though,” he smiles a little bit. “I miss her, but I’ve got you guys.”

Lucretia has never had that many friends and her parents died when she was young but she thinks this is what having a family would be like.

 

**THREE POINT FIVE**

"I don't know why they picked me for the team," Lucretia admits. She's sitting with Merle after a particularly bad mission as he patches up her leg. She's lucky to not have lost it. "I keep thinking I have everything planned out, but then I keep making mistakes." She winces, as the magic knits flesh back together. 

Merle smiles and pats her on the back. 

"We all make mistakes, Lu," he says. "It's about picking yourself up afterward, and working through them. You're smart, and perseverant. That's your strength. You just have to be a little more flexible. You're here for a reason."

It's the sort of fatherly advice that she never got from her dad. Merle has two kids who he calls every week like clockwork. They know that he's on the mission, and they always ask for stories.  

 

 

**FOUR**

“Don’t tell her, but I’m going to propose to Lup, when we get back home,” Barry says one night when they’re in the common area playing old fantasy DVDs on the TV. Barry's got an uncomfortably big bandage across his chest and can't sleep because of his concussion. Lucretia volunteered to keep him company. He grins nervously. “Think she’ll say yes?”

Lucretia smiles, delighted. “Of course she will. I’m invited to the wedding, right?” She gives him a tentative hug, trying not to jostle his wound. 

Barry laughs, and hugs her back. 

“Honey, you’re going to be best man.”

 

**FIVE**

Lup is dead and Lucretia is going to protect her friends and she is going to save the world and they made a mistake making the relics but it's okay, she is going to walk into Wonderland and stop the Hunger and it’s okay that they don’t remember her anymore, she chose this, she fed their memories to the Voidfish and they don’t remember her but it’s okay, she’s the only one who has to remember this the only one who has to wake up in the middle of the night with the vision of eyes and eyes and eyes and they have a chance to be happy and she will protect them and nobody else will die.

She hangs up her red robe. 

Lucretia is not a hero.

 

 

**SIX**

She walks in thirty-five and walks out fifty-five. She leaves a man behind to die. 

The old Lucretia never would have left anybody behind, she thinks. Ha. The old Lucretia. Get it?

 

**SEVEN**

Lucretia watches Taako, Merle, and Magnus walk in and her stomach drops. There is Taako, who tested new recipes on her. Magnus, who showed her how to carve wood. Merle, who talked with her about theology on the long nights keeping watch. She knows about Ravens Roost and Mavis and Mookie and Lup.

Only a year of working with Davenport stops her from running over and embracing them. There is no recollection of her in their eyes.

“Call me the Director,” she says, and does not betray the way her hands tremble underneath the desk. There are so many more important things than her feelings. The Hunger is coming.

 

**EIGHT**

Lucretia tries not to get too close. She goes to the Candlenights party anyway.

It’s like a video out of sync with the audio. As if someone fed her memories of her friends into somebody else’s brain. Taako, without his sister to temper him, without the memories of another person to protect, to play with, to be protected by, is meaner, more selfish. He plays the same jokes but his laughter is crueler. This is a Taako who never learned trust, she thinks. Merle never mentions his kids. She worries that they might have been erased from his memory, but they weren't attached to the dossier, so it can't be that. Magnus still carves wood and rushes into every situation, but he never mentions Julia, and Lucretia does not know whether it's because she's been erased or if he simply does not trust her. 

Still, Magnus gives her a coupon for a back massage, and Taako gives her a macaron. They find out her name and start using it. She wants to scream, wants to cry. She’s thirty-five and looks fifty-five and she misses her friends, and her friends are right here.

 

**NINE**

Captain Davenport looks at her with horror in his eyes.

  
“Lucretia,” he says. “What have you done?”

**Author's Note:**

> yeah im probs gonna add on/edit this at some point but like OH MY GOD i am dead. ((Edit from the future: edits and additions were added)) 
> 
> follow me at anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com or anonymousalchemistart.tumblr.com for more of this, whatever this is. 
> 
> and leave a kudos or comment if thats a thing u wanna do, that'd be cool! god. im so fuckin dead.


End file.
